whitenight - 9:59 pm on Oct 31, 2008 (gmt 0)

whitenight: Why Nov 5th? Sorry, don't recall last year's event.

lol, it's just an intuitive feeling.
Assuming Goog is just rolling out a huge test that will be eventually refolded back in,
they are trying it out over the weekend and right before US elections when traffic would be somewhat lower.

Last year, the #6 bug started to roll out right before New Years (before someone forgot to roll it back)

They like to organize these things around long weekends/holidays/etc.